Surge In Illegal Organizations Using Cryptocurrencies

The Cryptocurrency trading markets are currently grappling with a few final hurdles out of the long dip from the start of the year, multiple new start-ups in the Cryptocurrency industry have begun to sell their tokens online and the Blockchain technology has begun to be integrated in sectors far beyond finance. However, you can imagine the shock and bad publicity that Cryptocurrencies have received thanks to the recent news that the illegitimate and underhanded factions within civil society have begun to make use of them. Let’s take a closer look into the drama of recent events.

The Events Of The Meeting

On the 20th of June, during a meeting which was organized by a Subcommittee of the Terrorism and Illicit Finance department, a clear message was delivered to the media and persons in attendance of this meeting. The message to the general public was that there was clear evidence to show how digital currencies were being exploited by illegal groups for various uses within their organizations. The main reasons for this were listed as the need to crowd fund money from the general public, as an effective and anonymous means of transferring money anywhere in the world.

One Of The Main Hurdles

At present one of the hurdles the agents within Terrorism and Illicit Finance face is to attempt to analyze the extent of use of Cryptocurrencies as a means of finance within the criminal world. The obstacle is due to the way in which Cryptocurrencies are set-up, as one main reason is that Blockchain technology helps to keep the user’s identity a secret. Currently, an academic report stated that just under 50% of all Bitcoin transactions were not made for legal purposes.

The academic report noted that the vast majority of users who were trading in Bitcoin were not motivated by legal reasons and many were very much involved with criminal activities. During the time of their research they noted that just over a quarter of the years on all Cryptocurrency exchanges were engaged in some form of illegal activity. More disturbingly, the number of users who were engaged in criminal activity and on Cryptocurrency platforms increased as the length of time increased.

However, while we may all be shocked by the high proportion of criminal groups who are making user of Bitcoin, the fact of the matter is that the total adoption of Cryptocurrencies within the past few months has soared. This exponential acceptance rate has not just been on a personal level, but also on a corporate and state level as well.

Words From The VP

The vice president at the Office of Investigations at the Secret Service, Robert Novy, added that even though growth of Cryptocurrency adoption rate is greatly encouraged, the overall security of users and the systems must also be protected. Novy went on to state, that law enforcement must up-skill their arsenal to be able to navigate these newfound technologies and they must redesign their standard investigation procedures in order to discover ways of hunting down criminals in Cryptocurrency.

Consumer safety is a hot topic, it has been since before Mark Zuckerberg went to trial to defend Facebook and it will continue to grow as Cryptocurrencies and other sectors of the online market continue to grow. What do you think is the best way to combat this surge?